


claustrophobia

by twnkwlf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Claustrophobia, Isaac Lahey/Allison Argent Friendship, M/M, Season 3 A, self hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:39:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twnkwlf/pseuds/twnkwlf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He imagines it’s sort of like the wolf powers. They keep it tucked away, a secret, something to hide. He imagines, for some reason, that if people knew what he did with Scott, they would lynch him like an angry mob. Like Beacon Hills would lynch him if they knew about the wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	claustrophobia

They’re walking home through the tunnel underneath the east side hill, the one that leads to the park and the elementary school where Isaac went as boy. It’s smooth, made of grey concrete, and filled with dank air, graffiti, half ass weeds poking out of the cement. There’s a few patches of blankets against the wall and on the floor that must be somebody’s bed for the night.

 

The fear is sort of there. Fear- it’s usually underneath everything, covered by flesh and rationale, but for Isaac it’s _in between_ things. It’s itching inside the pockets of his pants, in the unreachable space between his shoulder blades. Right now, he can see out of the tunnel, to the yellow light of a lamppost on the other side, so the fear stays docile. It’s breathable. But he still walks quickly, feeling how Scott picks up the pace to match him, wishing that he could take the time to read some of the spray paint on the walls. He’s suspicious of the smooth concrete architecture, suspicious that the tunnel might crumble to rocks and barricade them in here.

 

When they’re on the other side, out into the air and facing the swing sets that his brother used to underdog and him on, he sighs and pushes the breath through his teeth.

 

“Are you okay?” Scott asks.

 

“Yeah...yeah, you know... just tunnels.” He casually gestures behind him. He’s been trying not to dwell on things lately which is a strategy that he picked up when Erica’s body was buried (when he didn’t want to dwell on the smell of her skin- much more pungent when his wolf-senses clicked in, and how the skin was blue around certain edges of her nails and lips). He won’t dwell on a bit of fear inside a tunnel. Not when Scott’s here.

 

“We should have taken the hill- I’m sorry. Man, I  forgot.” Scott slows down to touch his chest in apology with the back of his hand, very lightly.

 

“I’m fine now.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

The way Scott’s hand curls, the way it grabs his shirt and pulls a little, lets Isaac know that they’re going to fuck when they get back home.

 

* * *

 

Maybe it’s a wolf thing.

 

It started out that way, at least. If he has any kind of excuse, maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s just Scott.

 

Somewhere along the lines of late night alpha research, and homework, and uncomfortable, silent mourning, the guest room got to be too far away for functionality. If you could call the shit they worked on “functional”.

 

He fell asleep on the other side of Scott’s pillow for a few nights. It was strange to hear someone else’s snoring, to feel breath on his back, to feel like he was in a small space, but not in a bad way. It was strange how he got used to it.

 

One night, on the cusp of the full moon, he woke up sweaty and suffocated. It was body heat. It was legs on legs, an arm crossed over his chest, his ass warm with friction. There was a gentle rocking in the bed, but he was half-asleep, so he fell into the motion of it easily. Up and down and up and down, in soft and bobbing circles.  It could have been that he was dreaming of being in boat on the water. He heard a roar in the back of his mind, a disconnected growl, something that he locked onto and followed out of the rabbit hole while he slipped from dreams to thoughts, and then it was in his ear. It woke him with a lurch; his heart against his sternum.

 

He turned over with disorientation because he forgot where he was for a moment, like always. And like always, his hands immediately went up to test the space around him. He could extend his arms like he was playing airplane, and with that, his head cleared, the fear moved down the notches of his spine, making room for relief. It was so dark. He heard breathing

 

Scott’s room.  

 

He made the connection between heat and body parts. He saw yellow eyes glowing in the black. He tried to touch Scott’s arm, but it was really his stomach, and then Scott growled again, low and supernaturally.

 

“What?” Isaac whispered.

 

He didn’t answer. Isaac was half hard. Confused.

 

He lied back down in the place he was and waited, wanting to hold his breath, afraid to make a noise in the dead silence, but it wouldn’t matter, because Scott was a wolf and he could hear everything. Isaac could hear Scott’s heartbeat, and practically the rush of his own blood starting toward his pelvis. Something in his chest stirred like frustration. He growled back a little, just a small noise in the room. Then, very slowly, as if Isaac was some kind of feral thing that Scott was trying to pet, a hand smoothed down his stomach, to the warm place between his legs.

 

No one had ever touched his dick before. He couldn’t stop thinking about that as it happened, as his hands moved behind him to Scott, and he blindly tried to copy what Scott was doing to him. They hid their growls and moans in the pillows, a conscious understanding that waking his mother would be wrong. It was like jacking himself off, only completely parallel somehow. Isaac felt his face reforming, the hair bursting and stinging from his pores, the pressure of his brow jutting and bending, the tingle of the shift. He went full wolf, suffocating himself with the pillow so that he wouldn’t scream. This was the strongest, most frustrating part of being a wolf. The urge to fuck. And underneath that, the worrisome, hollow urge to be fucked. To be fucked by Scott.

 

He felt Scott’s come shoot through his hand. And his own, not long after that.

 

“I’m sorry,” Scott said between breaths.

 

Isaac didn’t know what to say.

 

He thought,

 

_It’s just the full moon rising._

And he thought,

 

_Please let me stay in this bed._

  


* * *

 

He leaves the shower door open because he has to. Water sprays off his back and pools on the floor in little puddles that reflect the light. It’s unavoidable how soaked the bathroom gets after Isaac uses it. The bathroom door is open, too, and soon Scott comes through it wearing nothing, hair wet from his own shower earlier.

 

“Where’s your mom?” Isaac asks him. Water covers his face so the words are muffled, but when you’re a werewolf, you never have to ask anyone to say something twice.

 

“Night shift.”

 

This makes his shoulders relax because a few nights ago, she came in unannounced after they had just finished, when they were still catching their breath and cleaning themselves up. He had barely enough time to slip under the bed before she looked up.

 

He watches Scott shave his stubble while looking closely in the mirror, while droplets of water bounce off Isaac and hit Scott’s back from the shower. He’s layering shaving cream, filling the sink with water, and he starts drawing the razor up his neck, cursing softly from nicking himself, even though the cut heels before the blood can even run. He does it again and again.

 

“Is this what you do to yourself every day? Cutting and healing until you get a close shave?” Isaac turns off the water and reaches for a towel.

 

“Whatever works,” Scott says.

 

Before they go to bed, he will dry the water from the bathroom floor. He looks at the glass box shower, he thinks Scott would want to fuck around in it, or maybe just clean him, or he could shave him while the spray hits their backs, and it would be nice, objectively.

 

But it’s much too small for that. He shivers at the thought.

 

“Come here,” he tells him. He takes the razor from Scott, who looks annoyed and a little ridiculous with a shaving cream beard.

 

He carefully applies the right pressure to Scott’s neck. The razor, sharp and new, clears a clean path, revealing skin that’s smooth and brown.  it makes him want to put his lips against it. Scott has the toughest skin of them all. It’s strange to Isaac that he cuts and bruises and bleeds so easily.

 

“What are you, a barber?”

 

Isaac smiles.

 

“No...just one of the-” he pauses to focus on curving around Scott’s mouth. “-few things my dad taught me how to do right.”  Isaac still remembers the sting on his face from those pubescent years. “If I slipped up, I had to put aftershave on the cuts. With a q-tip. I got pretty good at it.”

 

Scott’s eyes dart down, only for a millisecond. Isaac knows he’ll say nothing, nothing as the ice of his father’s presence settles around them, so he keeps shaving him quietly, with his face relaxed. He doesn’t nick him once.

  


* * *

 

Sometimes, he thinks it’s visible.

 

It’s not like Stiles can smell the sex on him when they’re together, but Derek and the others are different. Isaac can’t yet tell the difference in scent, of whether someone’s just horny or if they just got off, but he can still smell  it, and the others are better at this than he is, and maybe that’s Derek’s fault for never teaching him how to hone in his senses properly. Maybe he’s just bad at being a wolf.

 

One morning, Isaac lets Scott come in his mouth when he wakes up hard and pressing into him. Then later in the day, he passes Ethan in the hallway at school. For a second, Ethan’s nostrils flare, and he gives Isaac this look that’s probably just malice, but it feels accusing. His heart picks up pace, which doesn’t help him appear innocent.

 

He doesn’t know what it means if it’s visible.  

 

He imagines it’s sort of like the wolf powers. They keep it tucked away, a secret, something to hide. He imagines, for some reason, that if people knew what he did with Scott, they would lynch him like an angry mob. Like Beacon Hills would lynch him if they knew about the wolf. 

 

* * *

 

Scott still loves her. It’s very obvious. He smells like her sometimes. Like Allison’s lovely, clean smell. He smells like he’s kissed her sometimes.

 

It should make him angry, but he isn’t. He isn’t angry at Scott or Allison, or anyone (except maybe Derek). And the nights when Scott murmurs her name, pawing at the pillow like it’s her, the better part of him feels empathy.

 

She’s beautiful.

 

He’s always thought so.

 

  
She's his friend. 

 

And some days Isaac smells like her, too. When they work together, when they’re in class, when she lets him drive her car really fast on the highway while they listen to music and both of them are thinking of crossing the town line and never coming back (but they always do).

 

One afternoon, she looks like she wants to kiss him. They’ve parked outside the forest line, watching the trees with the music turned up loud. Isaac has one window rolled down to keep the air clean and open. They’re taking a break from everything-- sometimes they do that.

 

He tells her,

 

“I can’t kiss you.”

 

And she looks at him for a long time. A piece of her hair falls over her eye and her fingers brush it away. She looks sad.

 

“It’s because of him, isn’t it?” she says.

 

That makes his heart flare, but he just says,

 

“I don’t know.”

 

She touches her lips to the back of her hand and looks past Isaac’s shoulder to the trees outside.

 

“You love him?” she asks. “You love him like I love him?”

 

He doesn’t mean to, but he makes the slightest movement. The slightest inclination of his head. And she says,

 

“Feels terrible, doesn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

They kiss the night he becomes the Alpha. When everything is over.

 

And it’s kind of cathartic when it happens. He’s had pieces of Scott in his mouth for weeks now, frequently, and vice-versa. A kiss is disgustingly more real than sex, his saliva feeling more viscous than his come. They play with tongues, reminding him of lollipops and hidden, secret sweet things. Childish and scary. There’s something kind of angry about it. Something kind of dark. He thinks that maybe Scott is jealous about Allison, about how he helped her wake up in the ice bath instead of Scott, how they’ve grown close when Scott was always there, between them both.

 

Or maybe it’s already happening-- that darkness Deaton talked about.

 

Or maybe it’s just Scott’s wolf taking over, driving him to fuck. Isaac thinks suddenly about Allison and what she said and what it means.

 

Scott bites his lip, slides his shirt up Isaac’s belly, touches his dick through his boxers.

 

“Why do you want this?” he has to ask.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Scott says after a minute.

 

It takes him a while to realize that it does matter. He pushes his knees apart, facedown on Scott’s mattress, breathing in the overwhelming scent of musk and unwashed bedsheets. Warm, wet flares of Scott’s lips on his back, his hips.

 

The fear comes out of its hiding place. Why isn’t his wolf howling at this? At how Scott is rolling on a condom and sliding against him. The fear builds four solid, metal walls around him. Like the refrigerator.

 

He almost screams,

 

“Stop- wait- wait.”

 

“What?” Scott leans away from him. He covers himself with one hand, chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry- I-”

 

Isaac crawls up toward the pillows. He hugs his knees to his chest. He realized that the intrusive sound he’d been hearing was his heart beating on high, amplified. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrates, tries to make it stop by willpower. When that doesn’t work, he extends his arms to test the space around him again, and he can feel nothing but air on either side of him, and it cools him down a little.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

Isaac struggles to look at him.

 

He wants to say,

 

_I don’t know what it is but it’s killing me and it’s small and it’s suffocating._

 

He just says,

 

“I need some space. I need some air.”

 

* * *

 

 Maybe they both forget about it.

 

Isaac hasn’t forgotten, but he pretends all the same.

 

Isaac still sleeps in his house, in the guest room. Small talk at breakfast. Borrowing his bike to grab take out. The Discovery Channel with Scott's mother on Friday nights. Math Functions class together. Homework. A few talks with the rest of the pack about a disappearance four towns over. Grand Theft Auto 5 with Stiles and Allison after school. The empty ache in his ribs. Confusion. Nightmares. Jacking off alone, in the shower, with the door open.

 

And so it goes.

 

Isaac feels an urge to slap himself, to bang his head against the wall. He can remember when it felt good to want Scott. When it felt right to follow him, even when he wasn’t the alpha. It still feels right, but there’s nothing good about how he feels. 

 

He figures there is something wrong with him. There is something about Scott that he loves and there is something about himself that Isaac hates, and Scott is not big enough to hide in.

 

Scott should find someone like Allison. Someone bright. Someone who isn’t scared.

 

One morning, when the sun is up, and Scott is still snoring in his bed, Isaac crawls into the warm space. He shivers.

 

_I want you._

 

It screams in his brain a thousand times, clawing at the walls to get out. He wraps chains and chains around it and locks it in. He locks it into the only good, tiny space he’s ever known. It’s the place where he keeps the good things, the happy things. The small place where they are, somehow, safe.


End file.
